It had been more than six months since I left New York for more than a day. There were several reasons but it wasn’t because I didn’t have a desire to travel.
I returned to Asheville, NC where I experienced a deep grounding last year, and it felt so different.
Maybe it was how the city had changed since last year, or that it was later in the spring and the contrast between the high mountains and valleys meant that we drifted between seasons daily.
Maybe it was because I had changed and so everything looked and felt different. My body was different, I experienced myself as an animal gracefully ascending grades that would have exhausted me.
I was drawn to tiny flowers, tableaus of moss and lichen and air plants, and overwhelmed by the aroma of wet mushrooms and sticky, sweet florals that lingered. There was something heartbreaking about it. I can’t really explain why.
After I got back to NY it was an unseasonably warm day and I was called towards my regular swim beach where I submerged myself as much as I could stand it, for the first time since October. The cold, clear water rushed around my legs and I felt it slip through my fingers leaving a sticky film of salt.
The water at Brighton Beach is so clean this time of year, and I feel a kinship to the other early season swimmers. I feel a thread of connection to my Ukrainian ancestors, I imagine how they emerged from winter, thin and depleted, and maybe basked themselves in the harsh light. I saw fields of golden threads that glistened in the sun, tiny blades of green sheltered between the bodies of their own ancestors, and I felt at home.
I laid my own body down on the sand, skin tingling and electric from the contrast of temperature, and I felt a part of my body drift up into the sky and float away.
A sensation of heat from my face radiates down my neck and spreads across my chest. My mind becomes soft and pliable, and lilts with the sound of waves and music from a radio carried on the wind. I dissolve into the ground and shrink down into tiny grains of sand gathered and molded under the body, cool under the shade of the towel. The ribs are rafters of a cavern and the breath moves beneath them as they lift and settle. A rhythm pounds between my ears and I remember.
Ah, there you are.
Rays stretch out towards the horizon and silhouettes of familiar mountain peaks create the lines of topographical map, I move haltingly over the ridges and I drop into a valley that is heavy with dew, vanishing before my eyes.
Finally I’m ready, and I peel myself off the towel and rush forward. I plunge myself into the water up to my neck again. My neck tightens and I soften to receive the breath. I linger because I can.
I carry the sharp feeling with me as I stumble back to dry land on my partially numb feet. I am welcomed by a tiny crab that appears to wave its claw at me. I rest again in the sun and feel myself drift.
A couple days later I found myself in a series of conversations that moved me to tears I haven’t cried in decades. The ocean spilled out from eyes while a multitude of selves gathered in circles around me, and joy too. My heart squeezed with the pressure of a seed about to burst open.
Even a flower is brutal when you look up close, born in one moment and gone the next.
Isn’t that true of so many things? The beauty is made even more exquisite by its impermanence.
And like the snap of your finger you’re suddenly back, the light is ordinary but the feeling is still alive.
Dreams frequently draw upon imagery and events that have recently occurred, which can sometimes make us wonder if they are simply random. But we also see and experience an untold number of themes daily, a countless number if you consider that anything can become a symbol. Even if it is a direct mirror from daily life, the mind’s selection of particular imagery is still notable.
It can be tempting if you’re lucid dreaming (or daydreaming) to try to mine the dream for meaning as it’s happening. It’s a fine line between asking questions, which invites a closer observation of the dream, and trying to understand it while the story is still being told.
Fortunately our personal symbols are not always banal. But it also doesn’t matter if it seems “deep” or spiritual at a first glance.
More often than not when I facilitate hypnosis sessions someone will retrieve a symbol or memory that initially seems completely random, and after deeper exploration it offers potent wisdom that is perfectly aligned to the moment.
Over time we may observe that symbols appear repeatedly across dreams, trances and daydreams, and of course in our creative expression. We can enhance their power through cultivating them.
An enduring symbol of mine is Insects. I have had many trances, many dreams, and many real life synchronicities that include them. As I sat down to write this with the utmost desire to somehow make the idiosyncratic feel relatable and hopefully even interesting, I realized the subconscious presence of insects went back at least 15 years.
I was sorting through old artwork and found an assignment from grad school to depict a relationship between myself and a family member, and drew a spider and butterfly.
And last month I participated in a hypnosis session in which I became a beetle, with a shiny hard shell and delicate interior.
It reminded me of a childhood memory that had emerged in another trance from some years ago:
There was an aphid infestation in my childhood backyard. My mom and I went to the garden center and she bought a container of ladybugs. They were in a cardboard carton of the size and shape of a pint of ice cream, except the lid had screen material across the top. I opened it carefully on the deck and a moment later the entire contents covered my little hand like a glove. I felt a thousand tiny feet gripping my skin, and it was as if I had become another species, or I had been invited into a secret world. I waited patiently until they flew away (it took quite some time).
On more than a few occasions when I was experiencing deep pangs of anxiety in recent years I would look down at my hand to find a ladybug had landed on me, and a wave of comfort washed over me.
Exploring the archetypes of certain symbols, images, metaphors of a dream can be illuminating through the lens of history, anthropology, and the creative unconscious.
But we are also drawn to the representations that have meaning for us, and that meaning is shaped by our unique attitudes and beliefs.
There are many possible interpretations for insect life in a dream, but in my dreamscape insects represent ingenuity, the balance between protection and vulnerability, what it means to be invisible, or rejected, or vilified, and the sheer tenacity of the insect who is uniquely capable of defending themselves against even creatures a thousand times its size.
When we begin to track the personal meaning of these elements, which may also have echoes in waking life (synchronicities), we can create our own dream dictionaries that allow us to illuminate the most unconscious layers of a dream and receive the wisdom within. And we also develop continuity between our lives lived in the day and the night.
Have you experienced any synchronicities lately? Or repeating themes in your dreams?
How do you collaborate with them?
How do you navigate the lanscape of your dreams, what does the space show you?
Inward Vision 